Colmar is a sizeable town in the Haut-Rhin department to the south of the Alsace region. The town has rather a lot of more recent development around the edges, but continue to the centre and you will love the old town with street after narrow street of half-timbered, half-painted houses that will show you the real Alsace as it was hundreds of years ago.
The town also has two great works of art for which it is renowned: the first is the Issenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grunewald in the Unterlinden Museum and a magnificent piece of Renaissance art; the second is the 'vierge au buisson de roses' by Martin Schongauer in the dominican church, which although less important than the Grunewald is also a highly regarded altarpiece.